


Kith and Kin

by Evandar



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Implied Mpreg, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 23:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a rough patch in his relationship, Sauron arrives in Doriath to vent to his closest relative in Middle Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kith and Kin

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a prompt on HobbitKink. It should have been crack, but ended up...not. Also, Sauron is referred to as Mairon in this.

She knew as soon as he crossed the borders of her lands. She was so surprised by it – he’d never crossed before; she'd thought he couldn’t – that she dropped her embroidery and drew the attention of her ladies to her shaking hands and pale face. Her brother has come: Mairon, the lieutenant of Morgoth.  
  
The guards were warned but ordered to stay back. His malice was great, but not – she realised – aimed at them, and she did not wish to provoke him.  
  
It had been a long time since they had met in person. The form he wore was male and heavily cloaked in black. His hair, when he unveiled it, was the brightest gold and crowned with a diadem of black iron; his features were fair; it was only his eyes that held the taint of his evil. They burned red with the fires of the void, but…  
He was pale and sickly looking, and his blazing eyes were rimmed with red that could only have come from crying.  
  
“Mairon?” she called to him, standing from her throne. Her husband rose as well, but he did not leave the dais with her. She approached him alone, and trembling, held out her hands to him. For a moment, he did nothing. She started to withdraw, but then he moved; he near threw himself into her arms and buried his face in her hair while angling the rest of his body away from her.  
  
She could feel his tears burning against her skin, and she patted him gently on the back.  
  
“I hate him,” he hissed into her ear.  
  
There was only one ‘him’ he could possibly mean and she suspected that the hatred Mairon professed was far from that in truth. He wouldn’t be weeping if it was.  
  
“Come then, my brother,” she said. “Tell me.”  
  
He shuddered in her arms, and nodded.  
  
…  
  
His diadem was cast aside as soon as they entered the parlour. It landed on the table with a heavy clank that made the furniture shake and left deep scratches in the wood. He didn't remove his cloak; he had shrouded himself in it so deeply that she suspected it carried some sort of enchantment. All she could see of him was his face and hands and his shining hair that fell like a curtain before his eyes when he took a seat. His hands twisted in his lap.  
  
They were never close. She was apprenticed to Lorien and (to a lesser extent) Yavanna, while he was a child of Aule before his treachery was revealed. In those days, before the darkness spread and the song was still new, she hadn’t known what to think of him. He’d been a distant figure – fair and always smiling – before the illusion was cast off and his wickedness allowed to shine through.  
  
Yet, in a way, they were family.  
  
And although family was something she had only experienced in the years since her beloved had found her, Mairon had to have come to her for a reason.  
  
She poured him a glass of cool water, and placed it on the table by his side. “Brother,” she said. “What ails you?”  
  
His blazing eyes followed her movements, and he remained silent until she took a seat opposite him. Then he sighed – a soft, impatient huff – and stared into the fireplace until she thought it would ignite.  
  
“Melkor,” he said after a while, and she flinched.  
  
The sound of the Dark One’s true name was…surprising. She’d known it, even spoken it, but the name Feanor had given him had been taken to so quickly and by so many that she had quite forgotten it. But it made sense in a way, that Mairon would not use it: why would he claim the Dark One as an enemy when they so clearly were not? Of course he didn’t call him Morgoth.  
  
“He has harmed you in some way? Mistreated you?”  
  
“Oh, but of course,” he said lightly. “I quite enjoy it.” There was a faint curve to his mouth that she recognised from the days before his fall – mischief and trickery – though it faded fast, and was replaced by a scowl.  
  
Embers flickered among the logs in the hearth.  
  
“Three Ages of this world did he abandon me in the darkness,” Mairon said. “For three Ages I lingered in the ruins of Angband, alone with the Balrogs and the orcs and – “ He took a deep breath. “And when he returned, it was with jewellery. _Jewellery!_ Petty, Noldorin baubles!”  
  
He leapt to his feet and Melian pressed back into her chair. The flickering embers in the hearth exploded into flames and his cloak spread shadow as it swirled around his pacing form.  
  
“After everything I did for him, after I remained true for so long, he brings home three shiny rocks that he can’t even _touch_ without harming himself, and sees _nothing_!”  
  
His last work came as a shriek of wrath and pain, but in its wake his rage passed and he slumped into the seat she had offered him and buried his face in his hands.   
  
She struggled to find her voice, but eventually settled on asking “have you told him this?”  
  
The look Mairon gave her was scathing. “Clearly, I’m still alive, sister…”  
  
She laughed, nervous and embarrassed and confused all at once. She might be the closest thing to family he had in this world, but why he had come to her was beyond her Sight. He cared not for her, she knew that. He cared for nothing save Morgoth and himself and nothing would –   
  
“It wouldn’t be as bad if it were only I who suffered in his absence,” he whispered so softly that she barely heard him.  
  
“The lava streams beneath Angband make for soothing baths, and it’s calming down there in the dark and the fire. I could have stayed there forever, floating, but. The children.”  
  
The…what?  
  
“Glaurung tries so hard to please him,” Mairon whispered. She thought of golden scales and fiery breath, and that was Mairon’s child? He had borne a child to one of the Ainur, and it had been _that_?  
  
“He tries so hard, and fine he’s a little disobedient, but look at who he has for parents. And now –“  
  
His lips pressed together and a pale hand, flashing with golden rings, fluttered briefly as a dying bird in the direction of his cloaked belly. The fire was starting to bank once more, logs glowing red and crumbling into grey ash. Mairon’s weariness was dragging the life out of it, and the shadows that had spread from his earlier wrath lightened and vanished, leaving them sitting in the pale, winter sunlight that filtered through the windows.   
  
He wasn’t telling her everything. She doubted anything would ever convince him to. But there was a lightness about him that hadn’t been there before.  
  
“Why did you come here?” she asked.  
  
He flashed that familiar, mocking smile once more. “You aren’t ridiculously subservient,” he said. “And we are kin, are we not? That was your earlier claim.”  
  
“We are,” she agreed.  
  
…  
  
He left as suddenly as he arrived. He took nothing from them save what little comfort she had offered. He drank not their wine, nor feasted upon their food. Behind him he left unease and a set of deep scratches in her parlour table.  
  
Thingol came to her side as she studied the marks left by Mairon’s diadem. “Our guards are restless,” he said. “They seek to follow him.”  
  
“To do so would be folly,” she replied. “He has left an oath I think we can trust, and to test him now would be to die.”  
  
“He is evil.”  
  
“Yes.” She smiled. “He is.”


End file.
